by Steve Toltz
I say, “Don’t get your dick stuck in a conch shell.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious.”
“Just go.”
As I paddle back in, I see Stella and Clive are alone on the beach; Saffron’s gone. They look pocket-sized in the cloudy light. The violence of the waves rises under me and I hold on tight, afraid and sick of it, the fear. I close my eyes, but it is Mimi’s dead face I see. That forces memories to the fore: Aldo handcuffed to his chair, wailing hysterically; a mosquito straining its wings in a pool of Mimi’s blood; the artists, the artists.
I think I might as well catch one in. I slide down the empty wall of water and see it break in front of me; I tilt into it and turn off the wave just in time to avoid a dumping. When I get back to shore I stagger and collapse exhausted on the hard sand, next to Stella who’s crouched in a ball with Clive huddled under her knees, and all I can think of is how she plucked every strand of happiness from the heart of my tragic friend and yet it wasn’t her fault. Her sad eyes shift across the rock island. The rain comes down heavy now, and we can only just sit there and get soaked.
My phone rings. It’s Aldo, and I answer saying, “Hey, Aldo, remember that first afternoon on the toilet block roof you told me all you wanted was a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of a highly successful drug baron or sex trafficker, that is, a magnificent house with water views, top-shelf escorts, and suitcases stuffed with cash?”
“I’m going to stay here.”
I strain to see through the mist and rain and there he is, so much water pouring down on that rock ledge he looks like a drowning ladybug in a bathtub.
“For how long?”
“Forever,” he says, laughing, then hangs up. I watch him shuffle back farther under the overhang for shelter, and Stella grabs my hand, which is totally unexpected, and I think how the only people worth watching are those who have reached rock bottom and bounced off it, because they always bounce off into very strange orbits.
II
It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way
—Rollo May
The Madness of the Muse
YOUR HONOR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the jury, members of the press, madame court stenographer, random citizens who have nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning, Uncle Howard, bailiffs, live-streaming folks on the internet, I had woken early that overcast morning, in the weird limbo between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, in order to remove the last remaining advertisements I had foolishly stapled to every telephone pole and tree trunk from the city to the sea—advertisements that my well-meaning friend Liam had made me compose in a misguided attempt to give my dumb life purpose, and which had caused me nothing but literal agony. I enter the sign as exhibit A:
HANDYMAN. CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING—WITHIN REASON. HOUSE PAINTER. WINDOW WASHING. LANGUAGE TEACHER—ENGLISH ONLY. MOW LAWNS. PUNISH YOUR CHILDREN. WHATEVER. $25 AN HOUR. ALDO BENJAMIN. 063 621 4137. NO JOB TOO DISTASTEFUL.
It was ten a.m. and I had paused under some tree shade at a busy outdoor café to pat the head of a golden retriever whose bark, it seemed to me, was incoherent to the other dogs present. Right beside me, a middle-aged woman with a pale face dwarfed by an incredible head of frizzy black and silver hair—more a helmet than a head—was perusing my sign on a dry-cleaner’s window. She was nearly beautiful in the same way that I am practically handsome—think perfect physical beauty, then go down six notches. That was us; we were on the exact same notch. She scrutinized the sign before appearing to dial my number. My phone rang. I thought: Oh my God. How fantastic. She heard The Godfather ringtone and turned to face me.
—Hello? she said.
—Hello?
—How are you?
—Don’t get me started on babies who suffer brain damage during home water births.
—Are you Aldo Benjamin?
—None other.
—Is this sign a joke?
—Why? Is it funny?
—Could I possibly borrow you for a couple of hours?
—As long as you promise to return me in mint condition.
Now, this was banter, Your Honor—and who doesn’t love to banter?—but I was running out of banter, and as she moved closer I kept my eyes on hers, inexpert as I am in the art of appraising a woman’s body when she’s looking right at me. She had dark pockets under her eyes as if having just woken from a long night’s madness. I marveled at the audacity of her frizzy Afro.
—Do you think your hair might be a fire hazard? I asked, smiling brightly.
She frowned, as if smiling was as tacky as a department store Santa. The lengthy silence that followed was so dispiriting I removed a bottle of pills from my inside pocket and summoned my saliva to swallow one.
—You know what it says on the list of side effects of these antidepressants? May cause depression. Kind of makes you want to throw in the towel.
The woman’s hardened face remained implacable.
—So what kind of tasks are you generally asked to perform?
—Just the usual unpleasant and often dangerous jobs that the people of greater Sydney need doing.
—Such as?
—Mostly a punishing amount of heavy lifting and unmasking of unfaithful spouses.
She clicked her tongue, a gesture I took as my cue to elaborate.
—In the last month alone, I’ve been contracted to move a father into a nursing home while he was asleep, to search sandstone caves for a schizophrenic brother, to drag what is referred to in certain circles as a “human urinal” home to a jealous boyfriend, and to nail a cow’s heart to a pedophile’s mailbox. You want references?
I did not tell her that I’d also stumbled upon one man dead in a bath, another hanging off a tree, and a father asphyxiated in a garage. That is to say I was paid my standard flat rate to stumble upon the bodies of recent suicides, meaning I’d inadvertently found a horrific niche market of people who wanted to die in the privacy of their own homes but didn’t wish to burden their loved ones, something I knew a little too much about.
The deceased shifted her feet and gazed at me uncertainly.
—Will you tell me the job, or would you like me to guess?
—It’s mortifying.
—I don’t mind.
Then she told me the job and, Your Honor, she wasn’t joking; it was mortifying.
I was to spend the day removing naked pictures of her that a disgruntled lover had plastered on lampposts and phone boxes all over the city. She boldly presented me with one such poster; I gasped. The bastard had enlarged photos of the deceased’s face with, it’s hard to find another way to say it, a mouthful of cock—there, I said it—in a collage that also featured images of her dark, saucer-sized nipples and splotchy birthmark above the belly button. I didn’t need to ask why he chose these particular images. Her boyfriend clearly knew how to hurt women—who doesn’t?—and he knew how to hurt her in a specific way. I guessed, and was later proved right, that she’d never had an intimate moment without first giving the unnecessary but heartfelt self-loathing preface that these—her nipples, her birthmark—were the things she hated most about her body. On the bottom half of the posters was a phone number and address and her name: Mimi Underwood.
That was the first time I’d heard it. Yet it was so familiar. As my eyes flew over the images once again, I asked her if I could’ve met her before.
—Or, I asked, have I seen your name somewhere? On a billboard or bathroom wall, maybe?
—Jesus Christ, man. I’m having the worst week of my life. Will you help me or not?
In truth, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wasn’t sure I felt like it. After being so frequently suckered into gruesome bargains with the suicidal inhabitants of this morose city, not to mention the hostility and aggression from their families and my other clients, and the unsavory and amoral and vexing nature of the work itself, I had decided to abandon this ludicrous non-job that very morning. As you well know, it�
��s only when you quit and then change your mind that you can regret the harm that befalls you.
—Sure. Let’s do it.
It’s not every day you tear down pornographic posters with an attractive stranger.
So off we went, ripping posters off the fig trees in Hyde Park, off the brand-new apartment buildings made ugly at great expense, off the graffitied ANZAC War Memorial, off the Hungarian restaurant where they serve Wiener schnitzels as big as toilet seats, off the Central Station overpass, off the glass wall of the taxi stand where the drivers leer salaciously out of habit before they’ve even determined your sex. We veered off into the suburban streets where, to our weary disgust, he had plastered front doors, letterboxes, and children’s tree houses. This is how it went: Mimi feebly indicated a sign with a nod or else pointed accusingly to a poster and said, “Another one!” or simply, “Oh God,” and I’d go after it like a golden retriever while men called her name or applauded, children waiting for buses made sucking noises, mismatched couples stared judgmentally, and outside the hair salon a woman with tinfoil on her head flicked her cigarette at Mimi as she passed. Clearly, the stupid hag thought we were putting the posters up, not taking them down. In fact, the number of people who believed that Mimi had put the posters there herself was incredible. It was some strange business we were engaged in. And the glares Mimi was getting from men! I submit, Your Honor, that it’s disastrous for the species what looks men think are seductive. Mimi tried to maintain eye contact with them all, to paper over the humiliation that was constant and unbearable. As we walked side by side in silence, I felt her mounting anger acquiring a certain rhythm and I was growing increasingly uneasy, more and more convinced I’d be attacked before this job was over. All in all, a thoroughly stressful day.
—Holy fuck, we’ve already been on this street, Mimi said, pointing to a new poster of her that appeared to have sprung up on its own on the slick tiles of a pharmacy wall.
As fast as we could tear down the vile posters, Mimi’s boyfriend must have been putting them up. I scanned the street, heard crazy laughter. I thought: He’s enjoying it, the bastard. I thought: We seem inert and ghostly while our pursuer seems full of energy and life. I thought: It’s been ages since I enjoyed frightening somebody.
—Is he violent?
Mimi’s face darkened.
—He hit me once. I had to defend myself with a car antenna.
A car antenna? What had I gotten myself involved in? From somewhere behind me I heard the words, “You’re dead.” I thought: Calm down, it’s only a paranoiac who takes all his city’s death threats as directed solely at him. However, all this fear made me tired.
—You look tired, I said to Mimi. We should sit a minute. Do you want to sit a minute? Let’s sit a minute.
Mimi collapsed next to me on a bus-stop bench like a traveling salesman at the end of a long life. The heat rising from her angry frustration was intense and she ignored my commiserative smile as she was busy staring with concentrated force at a surgical-masked man on a bicycle leading a Great Dane who nearly collided with a businessman on a skateboard.
—What kind of epoch is this anyway? Mimi asked in a small, annoyed voice.
—What do you mean?
—I don’t know. When was the last time you saw a milkman?
A milkman?
—Beats me.
Here it comes, I thought, the story that is about to drop like a ripe apple from a tree. I imagined it would involve an abusive relationship with a vindictive, emotionally immature, and dangerous individual, the kind of paternal figure who beats his kids to death. Frankly, I was eager to hear it. But it didn’t come. Why didn’t it come? Usually it’s no problem. Usually I have the opposite problem, making people shut up.
Sidebar: When I was a young man, Your Honor, I grew expert at disengaging, otherwise people trap you in dusty corners or up against WET PAINT signs or in between washing machines and talk and talk and talk. It used to drive me crazy until the day I found it profitable that people have an inexhaustible supply of anecdotes and ceaseless energy to tell them, and endless time to tell them in, and no consideration whatsoever for the listener. So between jobs and after bankruptcies and before unemployment checks, I found a way to survive. Some people read fortunes for money, some strum and sing, some suck and fuck, some beg; I listened like a fanatic—crouching on a milk crate, leaning on a terrace, resting on a park bench, with a smile and open ears—I endured the arduous task of hearing people’s worries, or as I used to call it, peeling the skin off the unripe secrets of the mostly damned.
Yes, Your Honor, the cozy aches and liberating creaks of the pleasantly broken spirits of this city’s inhabitants was, for a time, my daily bread. People paid with a coffee here, a drink there, or a sandwich—sometimes actual currency—and unloaded their problems in record numbers. When I was angry or in a bad mood I threatened to misunderstand them, but I never followed through. My ears grew used to the hidden meaning behind their words, like eyes that grow accustomed to darkness. Don’t get me wrong. Or do get me wrong. I don’t care. The thing is, I was no doctor or healer or shaman. I didn’t even have any real advice! Only an impulse to put a pillow between the head and the brick wall it smashed up against, or nudge people discreetly toward their epiphanies, or boot them down the narrow staircase of truth into the coal cellar of their darkest hearts.
This is what I learned: Good times, they aren’t for everyone. And this is how you must react. You have to say, “Man, that sucks. I’m really sorry. That’s terrible!” That’s the first lesson. If you don’t know how to say, “Boy, oh boy, that’s the absolute worst,” then you aren’t any kind of healer. And another thing! You can’t put people’s suffering into perspective, so don’t even try. It’s like praising the good leg of a single amputee. He knows he has one good leg. He doesn’t need you to point it out. Of course the repetition was like sulphur thrown in my eyes. Oh God, how people so shamelessly repeat themselves. Sometimes they have a dim awareness, a flash of recognition. They say, “Did I tell you this before?” Oh well . . . They soldier on anyway . . .
The point, Your Honor?
—Relationships are hard, I said.
Mimi still didn’t say anything. I had no choice but to resort to a cheap trick. Tell her a story of my own. That gets people talking; they feel determined to out-misery you, to make your sad story seem like light fare.
—My wife Stella left me a few years ago. When a marriage falls apart someone has to feel relieved; In our case, I discerned little diamonds of light in her eyes as she left. The truth is, she kept trying to make molehills out of all my mountains—that’s just one of those quips that someone did me the disservice of laughing at once, so now, like some obsolete machine stuck on a single setting, I can’t seem to stop saying it.
I was torturing her with hints that my story would be a long one if she didn’t interrupt with a story of her own.
—Mimi Underwood, I talk too much. That’s what they tell me, and by they I mean the psychologists I consulted about talking too much.
The deceased still made no sign that she was going to spill it. So I went ahead and told her the whole story of me and Stella, up to and including the embarrassing zolpidem overdose on her hospital bed in which I failed to end my own life and nearly murdered a baby—my bad! After my long story, she finally spoke.
—I always said to myself that I’d rather be Anne Frank than have one of those lives where I had to get into my car to be alone.
—That’s what you always said to yourself?
She nodded and fell back into silence. That was it. That was it? That’s all she was going to give? After my saddest story?
—So are you going to help me destroy these fucking posters or what?
I tried not to hesitate or linger on the malicious posters, but aimed to mirror Mimi’s manner of tearing them into shreds quickly with disgust and finality. I knew it was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but I snuck one of the folded posters into my inside poc
ket when she wasn’t looking. Except she was looking. Her face went slack, and with quiet deliberation she reached into her handbag and extracted a metal stick that extended.
A car antenna!
I covered my eyes but that left my entire body open to attack. Mimi cracked it against my shin. I howled and fell to the ground and she brought the antenna hard down on my back. The pain was immediate and there was a delay before the thwacks echoed sharply in my ears. I wondered if her boyfriend was watching. It was like a dream. Her unrestrained fury, my state of weird depletion in which I couldn’t lift my arms or move my legs. I wanted to exchange knowing looks with the strangers who’d gathered to bear witness, but I couldn’t lock onto a sympathetic eye. Another lonely beating.
At last, Your Honor, she breathlessly retracted the car antenna and returned it to her bag, tossed one hundred dollars at me, and stormed away. I struggled to my feet, listening to the diminishing echo of her angry footsteps, and stumbled toward home with the sound of male laughter following me down the street.
No, I didn’t see her for another four months. No, we did not commence a sexual relationship until that time.
What do you mean? This is the short version.
II
As you know, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can always find someone worse off than you, but sometimes you have to go outside your own circle of friends to do so. That’s why I’d spent the day in question frenetically googling my way through a bonanza of grotesque-luck cases: the teenager who had a stroke after her first kiss; the man whose toes were eaten by his terrier while he slept; the farmer whose X-ray showed a corkscrew in his brain; the boy who lost an arm waving to his mother out the window of a car. A stockpile of baseline comparisons for therapeutic purposes. Every story asked me, point-blank, to have my say, and I obliged. Thanks for illuminating the true incoherence of cause and effect, franticangel33, you couldn’t have been unluckier if you were born in a tiger’s mouth. Hey there, functionallyilliterate007, understanding what happened to you is like trying to get a foothold in a river. The entire internet now gives off an unpleasant odor, thanks to your bitter tale, peterhotpants21, and I predict you shall never once be envied in your whole painful existence. Etcetera. Meanwhile, the phone rang constantly and I answered it to say no. I’d been doing this for weeks. No to invitations, no to creditors, no to market researchers, no to the crematorium to collect my great-aunt’s uncollected ashes—It’s been four years already, I said, let it go!—and I was still receiving calls about those absurd signs advertising my services, anything for anybody for twenty-five dollars an hour. No, I couldn’t varnish a boat, or “escort” a son to an arranged marriage. Nor could I shave and tattoo an enemy’s poodle. I even said no to myself. When did you last actually leave the apartment? Yesterday. Not counting the balcony. Eight days ago. Go outside and get some fresh air. No.
